María
Pérez de Heredia (University of the Basque Country) – Irene de Higes-Andino(Universitat Jaume I): "Multilingualism and representation of identites in audiovisual texts:
IDENTITRA, a Research Project”

Sofia
Iberg (Universitat Pompeu Fabra): “Multilingualism as
narrative device or depiction of reality? Mapping language use and subtitling
in Narcos”

Enriqueta Zafra; Marco Fiola (Ryerson University): “’Translators
always talk about loyalty – till their own asses are on the line’: on
faithfulness, vulgarity and equivalence for three audiences of Narcos”

A remarkable number of films and television shows display more than one language (Inglourious Basterds, Jane the Virgin, The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones…); they include different languages or a language with significant internal variation. The translation of such written and audiovisual texts poses important theoretical and practical challenges, since language variation can manifest itself in different forms and fulfil various functions, which might be stylistic, pragmatic or discursive. These texts are often referred to as multilingual, polylingual, plurilingual or even heterolingual.

The TRAFILM project aims to describe the reality of the translation of multilingual audiovisual texts. We aim to discover professional and social practices along with the norms and criteria of this specific translation challenge. We also hope to validate and refine existing theoretical models on audiovisual translation and multilingualism by describing and analysing a rich collection of data. The TraFilm Conference is conceived of as a meeting point for exchanges, research experiences and proposals for an increasingly important topic within Translation Studies.

Topics

• The translation of language combinations within the same film, videogame, TV product, or written work of fiction.
• Multilingualism and Audiovisual accessibility (Audio Description, Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Sign Language Interpretation.
• The translation (or nontranslation) of constructed languages, i.e., languages made up by the author within a work of fiction.
• The translation of conditioned language utterances within a work of fiction, i.e. when communication is conditioned by cognitive or articulatory hindrances, because of the effects of overexcitement, intoxication, exhaustion, psychological condition, speech impairment.
• The rendering of dialects and/or sociolects within a work of fiction or non-fiction, when they are used as distinct forms of communication from a standard language operating as the main language of the source text.
• Translation creativity when dealing with stylistic and/or linguistic varieties and language combinations
• Instances of code-switching, diglossia, bilingualism, heritage languages within works of fiction or as parts of translation of non-fiction.
• The stylistic and functional effects and implications of linguistic variety as explained in the previous points, above, e.g. humour, stereotyping, xenophobia, censorship, character portrayal, narrative and rhetorical devices.
• Reports of professional experiences and practices on translation and multilingualism.

Abstracts (up to 300 words), along with the author’s name, communication information, and short bio-bibliographical note should be sent to trafilmproject@gmail.com by 18th May 2017 with the indication “Trafilm Conference Proposal” on the subject line.

Keynote speakers

Michael Cronin

Michael Cronin is Professor of French at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Author of Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages and Identity (1996); Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (2000); Translation and Globalization (2003); Translation and Identity (2006); Translation goes to the Movies (2009), The Expanding World: Towards a Politics of Microspection (2012), Translation in the Digital Age (2013) and Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene (2017). Member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Academia Europeae/Academy of Europe and an Officer in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Co-editor of the Routledge series New Perspectives in Translation Studies and Editor-in- Chief of the translation journal MTM. He was CETRA Professor of Translation Studies in 2004 and Nida Professor of Translation Studies in 2016. He is an Honorary Member of the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association.

Marta Mateo

Marta Mateo is Professor of English Studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain, where she teaches Translation Theory, Literary Translation, English Phonetics and Phonology and English Intonation. Her research interests include the translation of multilingualism in musical texts, the translation of humour, drama and translation theory, about all of which she has contributed chapters to international volumes and published articles in both national and international journals, such as The Translator, Meta, Linguistica Antwerpiensia, Target or Perspectives. Marta Mateo is the coordinator of the Translation and Discourse Analysis Research Group at the University of Oviedo. She formed part of the Executive Board of the European Society of Translation (1998-2001); she coordinated the Translation Studies Panel of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies (2000-2004), and has been Associate Editor of Perspectives. Studies in Translatology (2011-April 2017). She has also been Head of the Language House of the University of Oviedo (2009-2013).

Reine Meylaerts

Reine Meylaerts is Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at KU Leuven where she teaches courses on European Literature, Comparative Literature and Translation and Plurilingualism in Literature. She was director of CETRA (

member. Her current research interests concern translation policy, intercultural mediation and transfer in multilingual cultures, past and present. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters on these topics She is also review editor of Target International Journal of Translation Studies. She was coordinator of 2011-2014: FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN: TIME: Translation Research Training: An integrated and intersectoral model for Europe. She is former Secretary General (2004-2007) of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and Chair of the Doctoral Studies Committee of EST.

Venue

Espai UVic
Via Augusta, 123, 08006 Barcelona

Important dates

Submission of abstracts: 18th May (expired)

Notification of acceptance: 8th June (expired)

Early bird registration: 26th July(expired)

Contact

For any queries regarding the conference or Trafilm in general, feel free to contact us at trafilmproject@gmail.com

It was a great experience for the Trafilm group to participate at the Languages and the Media Conference in Berlin last week. There was a great turn-up and lots of questions in the end. Some participants expressed their interested in becoming associate members, including Heike Juengst, something the whole team is looking forward to.

Our team is going to participate in the Languages and the Media Conference!
In the dedicated session titled: Multilingual / Third Languages, Patrick Zabalbeascoa and Montse Corrius will present Code-Switching as an Instance of L3 Combinations. The Case of Alternating Languages in ‘Spanglish’ .
Then Eva Espasa and Stavroula Sokoli will talk about Researching the Translation of Multilingual Films in Spain: The TRAFILM project
Guillermo Parra is also going to speak about Translating the Effects of Alcohol and other Drugs on Audiovisual DialogueFor more details, have a look at the conference programme http://www.languages-media.com/conference_programme.php

This
symposium was the first public presentation of the TRAFILM project (FFI2014-55952-P),
which researches the phenomenon of multilingualism in films. The seminar
started with a plenary lecture by Dr. Carol
O’Sullivan, University of Bristol, “Translating
Multilingual Films: from the Multiplex to the Arthouse”
which presented an inspiring historical and theoretical overview of
multilingualism in the cinema and its relevance for translation.
This was
followed by papers from all TRAFILM members.
Dr. Corrius and Dr. Espasa, as coordinators of the project, reviewed the
general theoretical and methodological framework of the project. The titles of
their papers were “From multilingual texts to Trafilm: A pathway to
validate and refine the theoretical models on AVT” (Corrius), and “An overview
of Trafilm project: methodological considerations and corpus selection”
(Espasa).
Then, Dr. Zabalbeascoa and Dr. Sokoli showed how the theoretical and
methodological foundations of the project can be articulated and integrated in
an online plataform of metadata, an essential tool for the TRAFILM group, which
is open to the collaboration of other researchers working in this field. The
titles of their papers were “From
pretty theory to messy reality: adapting L3 models and variables to the Trafilm
design of a usable online form for collecting metadata” (Zabalbeascoa), and “Collecting
data analyses of L3 instances in multilingual films: towards the Trafilm
consultable database” (Sokoli).Last but definitely not least, the seminar ended with
papers by Dr. Santamaria and Dr. Pujol, who showed the versatility of the
TRAFILM project to account for relevant phenomena in multilingualism in film,
such as cultural referents, or the presence of constructed languages in films
and transmedia projects: “L3 as a cultural referent” (Santamaria), and “Constructed
languages as L3 in Transmedia films” (Pujol).

This
was followed by a hands-on open research seminar in the afternoon, which let
all participants test the design and use of the TRAFILM database. Among the
participants, Dr. Carol O’Sullivan, who provided feedback from her expertise,
as well as doctoral students, including Guillermo Parra, who officially joined
the TRAFILM team in that seminar and incorporated his findings from his ongoing
PhD project. A phrase in the seminar that was often repeated was “From pretty
theory to messy reality”. This does show the complexity of this research, but
does not do justice to its positive effects: the richness involved in
collaborative research, and the fruitful interchange of information and
perspectives that this provides.

A total of 36 people attended this seminar:
apart from guest speaker Dr. O’Sullivan, all TRAFILM members, lecturers of the Department of Translation and
Interpretation (UVic), doctoral students of translation (UVic, UPF and UAB), as
well as students of Translation and Interpretation (UVic).

Next Friday, 17th June, in the context of the International
Workshop on Higher Education at the University of Vic - UCC, the symposium The Translation of Multilingual Films will offer an overview of the research project TRAFILM (FFI2014-55952-P).

The
seminar will start with a plenary lecture by Dr. Carol
O’Sullivan (University of Bristol), who will
examine the state of the art on multilingual film translation. This will
dialogue with the rest of the interventions, all by TRAFILM members,
specialists in audiovisual translation: Dr. Patrick Zabalbeascoa (UPF), Dr. Laura Santamaria (UAB), Dr. Stavroula
Sokoli (HOU, CTI), Dr. Miquel Pujol (UVic - UCC), and project coordinators Dr.
Montse Corrius (UVic - UCC) and Dr. Eva Espasa (UVic - UCC). They
will analyse the theoretical model of the project; its methodological and
technological implications and applications, as well as the connections between
multilingual films and cultural and ideological issues involved in their
translation.

A large number of films and television
series, and written literature portray more than one (type of) language
(than just standard British English, for instance), because they
include different languages or significant linguistic variations. The
translation of such texts poses certain challenges, since language
variation can fulfil certain functions (stylistic, pragmatic or
discursive). These texts are often referred to as multilingual (or
polylingual, plurilingual or even heterolingual).

The TRAFILM project aims to describe the reality of the translation of
multilingual audiovisual texts. We aim to discover professional and
social practices along with the norms and criteria of this specific
translation challenge. We will analyse films translated in Spain from
the beginning of the new millennium onward, in order to compare the
norms and tendencies when rendering linguistic diversity for dubbing and
subtitling. We will deal with translations from English (because of its
prevalence in the audiovisual markets), and into Spanish and Catalan
(the target languages of the academic, professional and social context
of the research team). The project pays special attention to gathering a
representative number of samples of how the phenomenon of
multilingualism has been dealt with in 21st-century films. We do not
restrict the number of language varieties that constitute the “third
language,” i. e. the variety that is not the source or target language,
since this research intends to analyse the functions of this variety in
order to deal with the related criteria for its translation. We will
also study the case whereby the presence of the “other” language happens
to be exactly the same language as the main target language for the
translation (for example, American English-language films which include
scenes in Spanish, and their dubbed or subtitled versions for Spain).
Thus, we intend to provide reliable data for refining existing
theoretical models of multilingualism in audiovisual translation, and to
compare tendencies across translation types.

The TRAFILM project also aims to create a consultable database, where
excerpts from multilingual films will be spotted and transcribed,
allowing the user to search languages and language variations with a
range of translation options. This database will offer quantitative and
qualitative data for research. It will also provide audiovisual
materials for translation training and foreign language acquisition.
Finally, it will provide a set of guidelines for translating
multilingualism, including diverse translation options.

The project aims to validate and refine the theoretical models on
audiovisual translation and multilingualism by describing and analysing a
rich collection of data. It also intends to provide useful material
resources, such as the consultable database and a set of guidelines for
translators, trainers and trainees.

The project TRAFILM (FFI2014-55952-P) is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness